Let me guess. You have behaviours you'd like to change.

Maybe you want to exercise more, go to bed earlier, or just stop dumb scrolling on your phone at 11 PM. Congrats - you're human!

But changing your behaviour can be difficult, and it's easy that you beat yourself up.

Perhaps you doubt your own ability to change (psychologists call this self-efficacy). Or your mind comes up with a bunch of reasons why you will fail, so you're stuck in a fixed mindset that will hammer your progress before you even have the chance to begin.

I'm taking a class in health psychology where one of our assignments is to carry out our own behavioural experiment. I want to share the process we're learning in class, hoping that you will find this approach helpful in your own life.

So, what methods can help us change our daily routine? Here are seven techniques we can use to make the transition more doable and fun.

7 techniques for behavioural change

I will go through these methods by sharing my own behavioural change: Eating more fruit!

1.Track the behaviour

Registration is about measuring your behaviour. It follows the principle of: "What gets measured, gets done."

You can track your behaviour change in so many different ways: on your phone, in an app, in a journal, etc. For this experiment, I'm keeping tabs of my progress in a journal. There's something soothing about using pen and paper. Do what works best for you here.

Important: You want to set a baseline for your behaviour, i.e. how much (or how little) you're doing the behaviour today. You want to get a realistic overview of what the situation looks like.

For example, I'm eating very little fruit, max 1-2 per week if I'm lucky. That's my starting point, and I will adjust my goal according to my baseline.

2. Set the goal

Goal formation states the goal for the behavioural change, according to e.g. a SMART framework: Specific, Measurable, Attainable/Accepted, Realistic, and Timebound.

​(You can learn more about SMART goals here.) ​

My SMART goal is to: Eat (at least) one fruit per day.

See how simple that sounds? I can easily check in with myself to see if I've eaten a fruit or not. Remember: simple does not mean easy.

At the goal setting stage, you also answer questions like:

• How important is this goal for you? Give a number between 0-10 (0 = Not at all important, 10 = Very Important).
• How certain are you that you will reach your goal? Give a number between 0-10 (0 = Not at all certain, 10 = Very certain).
• How easy/difficult is this goal to achieve for you? Give a number between 0-10 (0 = Very easy, 10 = Very difficult)

Next, it's time to weigh the positives and the negatives.

3. Balance pros and cons

A decisional balance sheet reflects which consequences your behavioural change will bring.

Here you list the positive and negative consequences of continuing as is versus making the change in your behaviour. It gives you a better understanding of your obstacles and where things might go wrong.

Doing this exercise gave me more (intrinsic) motivation to do the desired behaviour. I know that if I eat a fruit per day I'll get more vitamins and minerals that will boost my energy levels and help me feel good over the long haul.

4. Analyse your behaviour

A behavioural analysis investigates which factors that affect and maintain a potential problem behaviour that you want to extinguish as well as what factors that will increase healthy behaviour.

This is a big topic, and I'll return to it in future emails. The gist of the analysis is as simple as ABCDE:

A (Antedecendent): what triggers the behaviour (e.g. situation, context)?
​B (Behaviour): what are you doing?
​C (Consequence): what reinforces the behaviour (e.g. rewards, relief)?
​DE: (Distance Effects): what effects do your behaviour create in the long term?

This analysis helps you understand your own behaviour better, but it can also confront you, so remember to be kind to yourself. Nobody is perfect. A humble, curious and compassionate attitude tends to help here. Get help from a health professional, if needed. After all, this is their specialty!

5. Take small steps (celebrate your milestones)

Shaping involves approaching the intended behaviour by gradually making progress and reinforcing each step of the way, often through milestones.

You want to break up your goals into smaller milestones that you can achieve along the way. For instance, one of my milestones was to fill my fruit bowl with.... well, fruit.

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Learn to break down your goals into smaller steps because it'll make your behavioural change more fun and rewarding. Besides, you're more likely to be able to uphold your change afterwards, as well.

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6. Create a plan

At the planning stage, you make your goal more conrete and doable, for instance by deciding on when and where a specific behaviour will take place. You need a plan! It doesn't have to be perfect (no plan is), but you need to have one.

It's often smart to split up the goal into various milestones that you can register and celebrate. As an example, here's the rough plan for my fruit experiment:

1. Buy fruit at the store. ​
Set aside a "fruit budget" so that you give yourself the room to buy fruits of high quality. Visit a fruit stand at your local market where the fruits are cheaper but also tasty. See fruit shopping as an investment in yourself, your health and well-being (even if the fruits may be expensive, it'll be worth it).

I want to buy fruit that I already enjoy, but I'd also like to try new fruits! Shopping fruits in advance is an essential part of my plan. If I don't have them at home, how will I eat them?

2. Create clear cues and triggers for the behaviour
​To increase the likelihoood of the desired behaviour, I will bring out the fruit bowl into the living room. This way the fruit will always be visible to me. I will also listen to "fruit music" on Spotify. I might even change the phone screen to a pineapple fruit or similar. I intend to set up a post-it note on the door that says: "Remember the fruit", so I remember to bring it to school.

3. Make progress obvious and clear. ​
Keep your journal visible at all times. Clearly display your "fruit progress" at the kitchen table, where you often sit. Make this step fun, if you can.

7. Get ready for failure

You will at some point struggle with your new behaviour. It's part of the process, and something to be expected.

Relapse prevention is all about coming up with different risk situations where you won't follow through on your plan. Here you need to describe what you'll do in those exact situations.

Back to the fruit experiment. Let's say, I forget to buy fruit. How could I decrease that risk? I could:

• Add fruit to my shopping list
• Avoid the shortcut at the grocery store (which goes directly to the candy and chocolate section, and skips the fruit and vegetable area completely. How convenient...)
• Replace thoughts like: "Fruits are so expensive" with a more helpful thought, such as: "Fruits are healthy, and they'll improve my overall wellbeing."

You get the gist. You think of different scenarios where you'll need to have a plan in place on what to do, because the situation will challenge you.

"Fruitful" experiments

I started my experiment because I wanted to eat more fruit. I'm hoping that this positive health behaviour will replace my tendency to eat a lot of chocolate, candy and snacks during the weekdays, especially when I have a lot to do in school and at work.

In the long-term, I'm hoping that my fruit behaviour will contribute to other healthy changes and spill over into other areas of my life. We'll see if this type of change could have positive benefits for me later in life.

I'll keep you posted on the results in a few weeks.

Over to you

What did you think of these techniques that I shared with you in this email? Are you working on any behavioural changes that you'd want to share? Please reply to this email - I'd love to hear from you!

Have a great week!

Cheers,
Olle

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